Cape Cod Fire Starters - Yankee Ingenuity to Light Hearth without Kindling

This copper pitcher stood on the mantle at my grandparent’s home.  It is 6 inches tall with a hinged lid.  There is a long wand with a ceramic or stone ball screwed onto the tip.  This thing now sits in front of my fireplace but I don’t really know what it is.  Any information would be appreciated.

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Cape Cod Fire Starters used a wand tipped with an oil soaked pumice stone to light fires without kindling

Well, I’m surprised it stood on the mantle: that seems unnecessarily precarious.  It is much safer and more appropriately placed on the hearth near the fireplace or hung on a mantle nail through the hole in the handle.  You have what we from Massachusetts call a Cape Cod lighter. 

These lighters are designed to light a fire with no kindling needed – a relief when the snows of winter bury your woodpile.  They were very popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  I believe similar ones are still made.  The set consists of a lidded pitcher, an under plate and a pumice or ceramic tipped wand.

The pitcher would be filled with whale oil or kerosene.  The porous volcanic pumice or unglazed ceramic end of the wand would be left to soak in the pitcher, absorbing fuel like a sponge.  When you wanted to light your stove or fireplace, you would remove the wand and hold a match to the saturated stone.  The fuel soaked stone would light easily and burn for about ten minutes.  You’d simply stick the torch like wand under your wood and wait for the wood to ignite. 

(I’ve read conflicting accounts of what’s done next.  One camp says remove the still burning wand and submerge it back into the pitcher.  Close the lid and the flame will be smothered.  The other camp recommends removing the wand once your fire is going and leave it on the under plate to burnout and cool.  Either way, the stones can be reused for years before they loose the porosity.  Then the stones are easily replaced.)

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According to the mark on the bottom, your set came from the Cape Cod Shop.  The Cape Cod Shop was one of the best-known makers of these fire starters.  They had a retail store on Fifth Avenue in New York from the 1890s through the 1930s selling these and other brass and copper fixtures for homes.   Your fire starter is their “classic” model made from brass with the company’s distinctive flared fishtail handle.  They also made a more expensive Mission Style in riveted copper, brass or wrought iron for those furnishing their homes in the Arts and Crafts taste.

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I found a copy of a Cape Cod Shop ad for the New York retail shop.  The building at 30 West 15th, in New York’s Flatiron District, was built in 1908 (it’s now an expensive co-op!) so this helps date both the ad and your pot.  The ad lists the price of your pot at $5.50. 

Pots like yours can be found in antique shops or an eBay selling in the $15-50 range.  Your set is missing the under plate so a true collector would not pay top dollar.  What you do have - with your delightful example of Yankee ingenuity – is a useful tool and a great conversation piece. 

"Orientalist" Paintings Mirror History and Archaeology in the 1920s

Can you identify the artist who painted this picture?  It’s 28 by 38 inches without the frame. The central figure is a half nude woman with a drape around her hips.  In the background is a scene of other women lounging around.  It is signed Anso

The 19th and early 20th centuries, saw a rise in fascination with the history, literature, religions, geography and art of the near and far east.  Artists and writers embraced the mystique of Middle Eastern, Arabian and, Egyptian cultures.  Archaeology further enhanced the allure of the east, classical literature and the Bible. 

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Harem Dancer painting with decidedly 20th century features

 Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) earned enough wealth in the California gold fields to retire at 36 and pursue his dreams of locating the sites mentioned in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.  Schliemann was particularly fascinated with the city of Troy and, in 1873 while excavating in what is now Turkey, he located a stash of gold and jewelry including the “Jewels of Helen”.  Publications about his findings, and later disputes with Turkish government and his alleged theft of the jewels kept interest in archaeology robust. 

 In dance, choreographer Mikhail Fokine’s 1910 ballet Sheherazade, told the story of illicit love, death and sex in an Arabian harem.  In film, Rudolph Valentino’s iconic performance was in 1921’s “The Sheik”.  In world news, the Greco Turkish war of 1914-1922 kept ideas of near and Middle Eastern culture in the news.

 In 1922, English academic and archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun.  This further inflamed westerner’s infatuation with all things Egyptian and exotic.   Visit any of the Bay Area’s Art Deco movie theaters to scenes of this phenomenon.  

 Painters, too, latched onto this enchantment with the exotic.  As early as 1893, French painters formed The Society of Orientalist Painters; in Britain, artists captured a perceived ideal of the Empire’s superiority by portraying scenes of he boorish harems, slave markets and baths.  Scholars dismissed the trend as simplistic, accusing painters of using eastern exoticism to condone scenes of nudity, subservience and sex. 

 I believe the artist is of your work is Austrian painter Eugen Anton-Hofmann who lived from 1862 to 1955.  Although I can find no documentation that he ever traveled far from his native Vienna, his best-known works are of female nudes in what he perceived to be slave markets, abductions or harems.

This painting, "The Abduction" by Eugen Ansen-Hofmann, sold at Sotheby's in London for $28,000 in 2007

 Your painting depicts a nude woman with decidedly the 1920s or 30s western features of a bow mouth and shingled bobbed hair.  This points to the approximate year the work was done. The golden amphora to her right, the diaphanous veil around her hips and the sketches of other nudes in the background all point to this painting as portraying a western artist’s notion of an unfamiliar yet tantalizing scene.  The sketchiness of the incomplete background leads me to think that this painting may be a study for a more complex scene involving other characters. 

 It’s a lovely and alluring painting.  At auction I believe it would sell in the $3000-5000 range. 

Lydia Pinkham: Marketing Entrepreneur and Health Advocate →

I bought a sewing box and contents at an estate sale recently.  In it were things I couldn’t identify a name or use for.   

This item is 2 ½ inches long.  It is in two parts like a clamshell and I think it is ivory.  I appreciate any identification you could give me.

What you have is a tatting shuttle.   Tatting is a method of lace making popularized in the mid 19th century as a less expensive and time intensive alternative to point or bobbin lace.  If you were right handed, thread would be wound around your left hand fingers and worked with the shuttle in your right.   Tatting was portable: the only thing required were hands and a shuttle.  The shuttles could be wound with 10 or 15 yards of thread and could safely slip into a pocket.

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Lydia Pinkham had a genius for promotion.  She was the first woman to use an image of herself in marketing. 

 I’m not at all clever with needlework but I watched tatting demonstrations and to me it looks like a form of crocheting on a very detailed scale.

If you’re interested in learning to tat you can find instructional videos online.  I’d recommend a trip to Lacis in Berkeley. In addition to housing a lace museum, Lacis stocks tatting threads, shuttles and a selection of books detailing techniques, history and contemporary and historic patterns.

What I find more interesting is the fact that your shuttle was a promotional giveaway by one of the most inventive and tenacious women entrepreneurs of the 19th century.  

Lydia Estes Pinkham grew up in an abolitionist teetotaling Quaker family in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Throughout her married life she supplemented her husband’s income by brewing and selling her vegetable compound brewed specifically to treat women’s maladies.  By 1876 she had moved the production from her home kitchen to a factory nearby. 

From the very first, Pinkham separated herself from the crowds of patent medicine by marketing her compound as being made “by women and for women.”   Her image graced all packaging and advertising, the first time a woman’s image had been marketed as a corporate icon. Women wrote hundreds of letters asking for advice; in response the company published more than 160 pamphlets of “Health Hints” addressing not only “female complaints, headaches, menstrual cramps, stomach ills, infertility and lack of vitality” but cooking and housekeeping advice, first aid, home economies, sewing, and happy babies.

According to the Pinkham Company Archives at Harvard’s Schlesinger Museum, your shuttle was part of one of many successful direct-to-consumer and focus group ad campaigns.   Appearing in newspapers and women’s magazines in 1917, the ad promised, “This tatting shuttle will be sent free” upon return of a three-question survey. Interestingly, the survey did not ask about women’s experiences with Pinkham’s Compound: it asked where the ad was found and if the reader had seen ads for any similar products. 

Your shuttle is made from a celluloid compound designed to mimic ivory.  As a collectible, it will appeal to vintage sewing fans, advocates of women’s history, and aficionados of patent medicine.  Similar ones sell in the $15-40 range.